My ULTIMATE Truck Camper build is finished!

what's up guys welcome back to another episode if you're new here my name's adam and i make adventure lifestyle videos today you join me in the gorgeous santiago canyon which is about 30 minutes inland from where i live in newport beach california and today we are going to talk about this this is my 2020 ram 2500 truck which i have gone about converting into the ultimate daily off-grid camper zombie apocalypse dog transporter whatever you want to call it this is the truck that i drive on a day-to-day basis around and about i go get my groceries in it i take my dog to the dog park i take my girlfriend to the movies but if i had to at any given moment without having to put anything into it i could survive five days off-grid in the middle of nowhere and be fine in fact i would even go as far as to say that if i spent five days in the middle of death valley i would probably be the only person that could get stuck out there and put on weight by the time he got back i'd really appreciate it if you'd give me a little subscribe if you do enjoy this video so what we're gonna do is drive all the way up to not the top of santiago canyon i've done that before on my honda africa twin i'll link that video below but we're gonna go up to a place with a nice lookout point and i'm gonna show you everything that i have done to convert this pretty standard looking truck into a five-day off-grid self-sufficient camping beast you ready [Music] so i'm about halfway to where i need to be and i just realized that my gopro that i had mounted has come off i'm hoping i might be able to find it on the way back down i did get some cool footage of crawling up here but yeah it's off so hopefully nobody finds it before i do all right so let's get into this because that was a big claim that at any given moment in time with the way that i drive this thing round on a daily basis i could survive five days off grid so let's say i got stuck up here in the mountains five days no problem in the desert five days no problem i'll go one step further if i got stuck in death valley for five days i would have ice cold drinking water and or beers if i bought them no that is how i've built this truck out how might you ask well let's get into it so the first thing you're gonna notice is that for sleeping we have added the are zed topper or z if you're american and it's beautifully finished it's a paint to match so the paint is exactly the same as the rest of the truck so to all intents and purposes it looks pretty factory you've got these beautiful little trim things here that sit on the bed so that any water that comes down just runs off and it just kind of finishes off that edge very nicely on the back here we also have this lip that's all built in again helps you with the rain so you don't get anything inside of the cab and one of my favorite features about this is this so the lock on this is actually keyed to the truck so that when i hit the lock on my key it will actually lock the entire thing so with one click of the button i now know that my entire truck is secure this is locked you can't get in all the doors are locked open it up hit the lever and we're in welcome ladies and gentlemen to the bedroom now i knew that all i wanted to do back here was sleep so i know a few of you right now are watching this going oh my god he's got no headroom that's fine i built it specifically with that in mind obviously you guys are all going to have your own needs and some of you might want more headroom you can get that two ways one don't put in a nine inch thick memory foam mattress like i have and basically don't be a princess i wanted this bed to be super comfortable for me and my girlfriend and so that's why i went massively overboard with a thick mattress you can also get one of the taller toppers that comes up a little bit that'll give you a bit more headroom too but like i said i knew exactly what i wanted from this when i started to build it i actually built a ford e350 van before i did this truck conversion and i learned a lot of stuff on that one of my favorite sayings is perfection is not when there is nothing else to add it is when there is nothing left to take away and i kind of use that as my motto in building this truck so what i needed from this was a super comfy bed like i say for me and my girlfriend where we could sleep there is enough headroom that you can lay up you can't sit up in bed but that's not a problem because most of the time we're outside this is just for sleeping and also some sideways activities because there's no other way to do it so i installed these led lights up here which i absolutely love because at night you do want a little bit of light in here and it's fun they can go all kinds of different colors but typically i'll just keep them on red because that way you can see plenty but also it doesn't mean that the light escapes out of the windows these do have the factory tint on them i am going to go darker i'm going to do a limo tint just for extra security and also because realistically i don't want anybody to be able to see in the truck at any point day or night so that's the sleeping setup let's get into the real magic of this truck and the reason why i'm able to live for five days off grid and that starts with the kitchen and the pantry which is on this left hand drawer so what we have here is two six foot drawers they're on these locking drawer slides that will hold up to 500 pounds now these slides are expensive i think they were 250 per pair obviously there's two of them so 500 just for the draw slides alone i have seen people build these where they just have the drawers that pull out and they'll put them on some kind of like a nylon slider rather than doing the actual slides themselves that's perfectly doable i just wanted to make sure these things would last and so me and chris who built my van for me decided to use them on this so let's get down to the real meat and potatoes of this quite literally and that is in the kitchen so the kitchen is the left side and the storage slash wardrobe is on the right side so let me show you how this thing opens and we can get into how this will stain me for five days that there my friends is a six foot draw on slides that will hold up to 500 pounds of weight they are solid i've done this in bed liner because i wanted something that was a nice durable finish and then this right here is a silicon heatproof mat which i might end up permanently affixing to this top or i might leave it loose i'm just going to live with the truck for a little bit to figure out how i use it and then if i do decide to keep it loose i will be painting this in the truck bed liner as well to finish everything off so we have the coleman stove which opens up we've got stainless steel back here just to help reflect a bit of the heat we have the gas bottle so i have room for extra propane bottles back here when i'm cooking this one goes in like that and there you have your cooker fully set up in two seconds flat no fanning around no having to grab it out and put it on a table or anything like that it is good to go as soon as you open up the kitchen and then for when you want to chop your veggies well you use your chopping board don't you so i love the idea of having like a fold out section you see those rvs that start off skinny and then like they have all these different slide outs and they end up being a palace well that's kind of the idea that i was going with here so we have the fold out chopping board we also have this which i'm super pleased with which is a fold out sink so when i'm ready to do my dishes i can put some water in here do my dishes and then i actually have a folding bucket that can go underneath that i can drain the water out into and then go and toss it away and also this does remove so if i did just want to take this and get rid of it i can obviously i use biodegradable soap so that if i am out in the woods and i do decide to throw it out onto the grass then it isn't going to do any harm to anything and once you're done all you do is put your gopro in your mouth and then you pop it out like that and then slide it away we put this little lock on because at the moment this bedrug that we have installed there's a little ridge right here and it just catches on this front door and decides to open it so we just put this on for a little bit of added security so the pantry this is one of my favorite parts of the entire build look at that my friends this is why i can live for five days off-grid because i have stacked this full of all the things that you might want like black beans and great northern beans and more beans refried beans what else we got mushroom stems we've got potatoes we've got peas we've got veggies rice pasta pasta sauce tea obviously every single herb spice and oil you could possibly want and all of the hot sauces from valentina to marry sharps beware comatose heat level and of course because you can take the boy out of england but you can't take the england out of the boy we've got fernando's perry perry hot sauce and then in here we have uh my kettle this is super cool i just got this so when i'm cooking at night i can pop this on here and this is actually a usb powered led touch light so you hit that uh like so and then you've got a little led and you can have it warm or you can have it cold whatever you want it's brilliant i love it obviously you can't see it very well right now but just gives me that little bit of light from when i'm cooking other cool features i've got things like this where it's just so my paper towels clip on so i can access that obviously i can put it there i can hang it off there hang it off here wherever you want it fits perfectly over the thickness of wood that we used and somewhere in here i believe it's back here yeah this is such a snazzy little tool so you fold the two little arms up put it like that and then you get yourself a plastic bag and look at that a bin how good is that i was amazed when i saw one of these and so it just makes everything so easy like said that van taught me so much about what i needed and what i didn't need and the main thing that i needed was to very quickly have a cooking setup because in the van typically i wouldn't cook inside i would always take everything outside i would set up my table i'd pull out my camp stove you know everything had just had to be set up and broken down each and every time even making a cup of tea in the morning was a pain in the ass whereas with this i pull out the draw lift the lid turn the gas on light the stove and i'm good i've got all my pots and pans here this is actually a brilliant little setup so this is every single pot and pan i could possibly need that is a frying pan you have one handle that clips in and does all of them and in here i have all of those other pans all within one tiny little footprint and that again was one of the main things that i wanted with this build was for everything to be very simple very basic but lose absolutely none of the functionality that i needed other things like instead of having a knife and fork drawer where they're all kind of set up now i have a knife and fork roll so everything is right here enough for four people and when i want to clean it when i get back to the house i just take this whole roll in throw it in the washing machine and then take it back out to the truck and that's it i'm done this contains all of my cooking utensils everything look at that everything everything knives even a mini chopping board in there tongs scissors the whole lot and then tucks away back here super nice and then everything just has its place ah i have mild ocd and this makes me so happy now this is also one of my favorite features so we installed these little lifts and basically that gives me all of this counter space so when i'm cooking i can have plates here ready to be plated up i can put pots and pans up on the top i can have drinks up here i can do whatever the hell i like i can even pull this out if i want to and use this for additional space because things can sit on there too i just have so much counter space in such a little package and it's perfect everything is right where i need it at any given point in time now i researched all of the different campus setups that people had built all of the truck bed setups that people had built and i kind of took the best bits from all of them and then put my spin on it and i am so stoked on what i've come up with and i don't mean to blow my own trumpet but toot toot me and chris who is the guy that built all of this have done such a killer job it works exactly as i want it to and honestly i think of all the ones i've seen this might be the best one and i only take credit for kind of the layout and stuff chris is the one that built this and if you haven't seen the videos where we actually put this thing together go back and check those out because we have all of like the actual build process itself but yeah i just think that we've done such a great job with this so chris thank you so much mate i mean without you this would just be some shitty old plywood falling apart rattling around in the back of my truck but let me show you one of the other nice things about this and why it truly makes it off-grid because right now all i've showed you is a kitchen with some tin food in it and anyone can do that you can throw that in the back of your volkswagen polo let me show you what truly makes this off-grid and for that we shall have to go up onto the roof yeah i was going to clean the truck and i'm glad i didn't because look how disgusting this is so up here ladies and gentlemen are 200 watts of flexible solar panels so these were only about 125 each i'll link them in the description below but these mount with adhesive tape so i've used body bonding tape i put on these cool little edges on the front just to kind of give the front a little bit of protection and then i've run the wires down and they go into the cab and i'll show you what that powers in a minute but these cannot be seen from the ground so no one has any idea that this thing is a camper van because look from down here it just looks like any old truck and even if you do just about catch the front and the wires well this thing's got all kinds of unicorn horns and stuff on it anyway because i've got my satellite radio i've got my gps wi-fi hotspot antenna on there so it really doesn't look out of place so when you see the truck like this it's just a truck now if i was stuck in death valley for five days i would always have ice cold water and ice cold beer so first of all i've got a six gallon water jug right here plenty enough to get you through five six seven days if you ration it out and then this is what really changes things so this is a 55 liter alpi cool fridge and i think right now it is just stacked full of yeah liquid death so i always carry water around with me sparkling water and regular water and that is constantly in here at a beautiful 41 degrees and this is being powered by a jackery 1500 let's see what we're running at right now this fridge is so good on power that it isn't even pulling any power to keep it at the temperature it's at now i did buy this cool like thermally insulated jacket just to help it out a little bit but these things sip power and even when the compressor is running it only uses about 35 to 45 watts of power now these solar panels at midday will crank out about 140 watts of power between them there are 200 watt panels obviously they're never going to create a full 200 watts but if you do the maths with the fridge pulling 35 watts and these things charging at let's say 100 watts even i've got enough power to power this three times before it even touches the battery power from the jackery so this jackery is constantly being topped up by the sun right now it's at a hundred percent and it is five o'clock in the afternoon so this thing has been running all day the solar panels have been receiving the juice from god's flashlight and it's just perfect so if you are looking to build like an off-grid setup i have bought the lithium batteries i currently have two thousand dollar each battery sat in my garage that i was going to put into my camper van i never installed them because i put a jackery in there with a very similar setup to this i just used the thick solar panels on that one and so realistically for something like this these power packs are so good because what it means is if i wanted to go and have a picnic and there was a picnic bench or go down to the beach and i wanted to run something i could pull that jackery out and i could march my merry way down and i could go use it on the beach so you're not tied to everything being linked into the truck so if i wanted to sell this truck tomorrow all i would need to do is unbolt the turnbuckles from this bed platform slide it out i would take the solar panels off the top peel off those adhesive strips it would take a bit because there's quite a few of them on there remove the fridge and the jackery and now we're back to a standard truck i love the fact that i've been able to do something so impressive while being so unintrusive so that's how i eat and drink and stay merry when i'm stuck off-grid trying to survive well where do i keep all my stuff well my friends all my stuff goes in the other side so we have this drawer which is another six foot drawer this one has dividers but if we want to we can remove the dividers and the gap between here and here is perfect that i can stack every single one of these dividers back here even behind this piece and then the whole thing just becomes one big empty space to put bags or whatever else i want in them what i have right now up front is this is five days worth of kibble for diesel i always try to keep that full on here so that diesel has food always on deck his food bowl obviously his water is up front because i actually have this setup for my dog full time so this hammock here basically keeps everything protected as you can see he is a hairy beast and i have these weathertech floor mats and these weathertech door protectors to make sure that everything stays as clean and tidy as it possibly can there is some hair down here but it actually does vacuum up very very easily and these floor mats are a game changer so if you are looking to protect your car from the elements and your hairy dog then these weathertech mats come highly recommended oh and this is a bottle of my pee so back here we have all of diesel space he's got his bed here he has tons of room he can stand up he looks out the window even when we're asleep in the back he's able to stick his head through here right at our head height and say hi so he really does feel like he's part of the party which i do love and the main reason that i bought the mega cab which gives you this extra like foot in the back was for my dog look he even has his own air conditioning vent so typically in here i would obviously have my clothes and stuff for the trip but what i also carry is a portable fire pit so this actually folds out and turns into a cool little fire pit this was that bucket i was talking about so this unrolls and makes a bucket so that i can dump any water or if i want to do any washing of clothes or my own body i can do that too i also have a flameless log in there as well and some plastic bags done and that's it i'm ready to go so one of the nice things about the way that i chose to build this was the bed platform is just held in by these turnbuckles and so all of the space down the side between the bed platform and the wheel well is all open and that means that i can stash anything i want down there and it gives you just that extra bit of room just so that you can put shoes and clothes and if it is cold then you don't want to have to get out and then get changed outside of the truck so at night you can get in you can stash all your clothes down in the little gaps and then you're good to go in the morning and hopefully things stay nice and toasty like say i do have this bedrug which is a carpeted liner that goes in so that insulates it very nice i haven't camped in it when it's been really cold yet but i have camped in it when it's been like 70 degrees out and oh my goodness it's toasty so i don't think we're gonna have any issue with keeping warm in this thing in fact i think it's the opposite i think when it gets really hot we're gonna have to work on keeping it cool and i do have a couple of ideas for that too so you're sitting in here you're hanging out having a great time and you just get to enjoy this gorgeous view of the mountains from your bed and it is so nice honestly i am tempted just to have a little snooze here this afternoon wait for traffic to die down because this is just the best ah yeah i could just have a nice little snooze so there you have it guys that is my daily driver that also at any given moment in time could turn into an off-grid bug-out zombie apocalypse van and i could get by for at least five days tell me what you think in the comments let me know what you would change let me know what you love i love talking with you guys and hearing your thoughts i am absolutely in love with this thing and if you stay tuned we will be doing more to the exterior of this truck next i wanted to get the camper setup done i wanted that all finished before we started anything else but i've got a trip back up to precision motor works yes the same guys that did all of the work on my golf and we are gonna do some stuff to the truck uh spoiler alert we're also gonna do some more stuff to the golf and we're gonna need some stuff to carry this car as well so there's a lot of fun stuff coming up guys a lot of cool car and truck related content so if you have enjoyed this please subscribe give it a thumbs up share it with a friend show a buddy who needs this in their life i am of the firm opinion now now that i've done it i don't think i ever want to be without a vehicle that allows me to do this kind of thing because there's something very comforting about knowing that if something was to happen and i'm not a doomsday prepper i'm not a negative person i'm not expecting the worst at any point in time but what i do like is to be prepared i wasn't the boy scout but i definitely live like one and so this just gives me that comfort that if at any point in time i did need to just take off and go somewhere that i could and i would have everything that i needed to be self-sufficient for a little while at least so yeah anyway guys i hope you enjoyed this if you have please give it a big thumbs up please subscribe if you want because i would love to see you here again and also we are chasing that hundred thousand subscribers so please help me get there like i said we got a lot of cool content coming with the truck with the golf with carrie's car we've got sea doo content coming more camping and even some catch and cooks that's right catch and cooks so guys thank you so much for watching i appreciate each and every one of you tag your friends send this to your friends if you think they need one of these in their life and most importantly remember until next time don't do anything i wouldn't do see ya what's up dude hey how's it going good so i had a gopro on this uh that fell off somewhere down there um this guy may well have already picked it up it's on a dual suction mount okay if you happen to see it as you're going around if you can pick it up and take it with you when you have service and i have service maybe i can come pick it up from you in a couple of days dude thank you so much other ways hell yeah we got it back that's awesome that's very kind of then they didn't have to say that they found it that is very nice so thank you very much if you ever see this video thank you thank you thank you for picking that up that is really really nice and i will hopefully be able to pay that forward some other way [Music] you

Channel: Adam Swords

Views: 73,039

Keywords: truck camper, off grid, truck camping, truck camper build, truck camper diy, off grid truck, off grid truck camper, off grid living, vanlife, van life, off grid van, camper van, diy truck bed camper, truck bed camper, truck bed camping, diy truck camper, truck drawers, slide out kitchen, truck build, truck camper living, off grid solar power system, solar panels, ram 2500, dodge ram, dodge, ram truck

Id: Evw6glmWTLM

Length: 23min 54sec (1434 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2022